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Color

It’s a rainy Wednesday afternoon, and I’m creatively spent. My brain has been drained by a fast paced time-consuming project that has left me mentally spent. So I set out to find some creative inspiration, and refuel for the second half of the week. While cruising around on Vimeo I came across the video below and a link the project breakdown on Behance.

All the Things from Chris Guyot is a wonderful animated short filled with oversaturated colors, fluid animations, great sound design, and absolutely no real story. I love it. 8 short vignettes in a minute and a half that left me with a smile on my face and the desire to create something just as fun.

“All The Things” is a collection of individual narratives, unified by a cohesive style.

Our intention was to work on a short, simple piece. As many of you know, sometimes personal projects evolve and take on a mind of their own. As the months rolled along, we found ourselves frequently going back and adding more content to each scene. We had a lot of fun allowing our imagination drive the development of the various narrative.

Like this:

When Pantone announced the top two colors for 2016 were pink and baby blue I kind of thought it was a joke. It isn’t those two colors are showing up everywhere, along with 80’s inspired graphics and animation treatments. The good news, is it looks like the long trending sketch book look might finally be dead. We can only hope right?

The first video is from Contra for Izzy Bizu. It has a great look to it. And the story makes watching all the way through worth it. The second is a series of indents for Nick at Nite from TransistorStudios that embraces the pink and blue fusing it with some really nice stop motion, CGI, and traditional animation.

Over the last seven years, Jens Müller has been collecting and compiling modern logos created from 1940 to 1980. As Müller puts it, this was the golden age of the modernist aesthetic in design, architecture, art, product design. And to a point he is right. Some of the most visually memorable brand marks and logos come from this four decade period. Müller’s collection is what makes up the content of Aachen’s 6000 page tome Logo Modernism.

The book covers pretty much every business and organization of note, and represents a sweeping retrospective modernism and how the style changed over time. Broken into specific sections the book’s main chapters cover Geometric, Effect, and Typographic. Each sub-chapter breaks down each style even further into sections such as dots and squares, overlays, alphabet, color, etc.The book features an introduction from Jens Müller on the history of logos, and an accompanying essay by R. Roger Remington on modernism and graphic design. In addition there are series of designer profiles on masters of the craft Paul Rand, Yusaku Kamekura, and Anton Stankowski focusing on their legendary work.

In typical Taschen heritage, the book is physically huge. at 10 by 14 inches in size and 432 pages of content. And as always from Taschen, the book is multilingual. It’s available for pre-order and this just made my list of books to add to the reference library. Oh and it’s affordable. Just $69.00 on the Taschen site.

We see them everyday. They are impossible to avoid, and yet most of us rarely think of them. I’m talking about automotive logos. The badge that is on the front and rear of almost every single piece of rolling stock in the world.

Those logos are not just the visual symbol of the manufacturer, they are the brand that represents what you think of in terms of quality, luxury, economy, fit and finish.

The infographic below from Car Dealer Review shows how various automotive logos have evolved over time. Some subtlety, others radically. Some of the more interesting examples are the older and smaller brands like Fiat, or Aston Martin.

As a designer I work with color every day. Color is one of the most powerful communication devices that designers use. It offers an instantaneous response in the form of non-verbal communication and helps convey meaning in and messaging in logo design. So it is highly important for design professionals in all fields to use color appropriately and understand the meaning behind the colors they choose in their projects.

Our minds are inherently wired to respond to color in certain ways, and we are programmed from an early age to respond to color based on cultural ethnography’s as well. Color helps to shape our feelings and emotional responses to visual stimulus, and according to studies, color affects more than just our mood. Color has the ability to change our buying habits as well. Studies have shown that color can invoke as much as an 80 per cent change in motivation when it comes to online shopping, advertising, and marketing campaigns.

While the perception of color is in many ways subjective, there are some color effects have universal meaning. The infographic below from Canadian design firm Muse is a great example of how different colors are perceived in relation to logo design. Just a little food for thought on Monday morning.

Dublin Ireland based bike builder “Funked Up Fixies” creates bright customizable bikes in a variety of ranges and styles. They are a young company filled with passionate young and creative individuals that are into skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing and cycling. The fixed gear bikes they produce are built around the idea of low maintenance, urban suitability, and fun. The video below was produced by Wolf & Lamm for Funked up Fixies an features a sexy, colorful and dramatic spot all set to a soundtrack of French pop music. The look captures the vibe of the company and the product they produce in a somewhat cheeky fashion. One that would probably never make it on prime time TV in America. The clip has a great look, and just the right amount of humor to make it work.

Making the call for “The Color of the Year” is a pretty bold move, but if anyone can do it PPG can. PPG has released their color predictions for the 2014 market in a 100 page PDF that is available for download on their website. So what is the color of the year? Butter Cream Yellow.

PPG’s recently published its 2014 Global Color Trends book, is an overview of PPG’s collective forecast for color use in building and decor, automobiles, consumer electronics and aerospace. The book was produced by the company’s global team of color experts, and is accessible online at http://www.ppg.com/globalcolortrends, or if you prefer to have a printed version, you can order it by contacting Dee Schlotter of PPG at schlotter@ppg.com.

The book details color families trending across industries and geographic regions, and it showcases five color trend ‘stories’ for 2014.

Hi-Breed emphasizes a new design harmony between man and nature with a palette consisting of neutrals, pastels and bright hues.

Mosaic is based on the wealth of artisan and craft patterns, shapes and prints, as well as their strong colorations.

New Spirit reflects earthy, primitive, raw colors as well as a new consciousness.